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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Jennifer Mandula

When a Victorian fossil hunter discovers a baby pterodactyl, she vows to protect him with the help of a fellow scholar – her former fiancé – in this enchanting and transporting historical fantasy. Perfect for fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries and A Natural History of Dragons 
 
Mary Anning wants to be a geomagician – a paleontologist who uses fossils to wield magic – but since the Geomagical Society of London refuses to admit women, she’s stuck selling her discoveries to tourists instead. Then an ancient egg hatches in her hands, revealing a loveable baby pterodactyl Mary names Ajax, and she knows that this is the kind of scientific find that could make her career – if she’s strategic. 
 
But when Mary contacts the Society about her discovery, they demand to take possession of Ajax. Their emissary is none other than Henry Stanton, a distinguished (and infuriatingly handsome) scholar... and the man who once broke Mary’s heart. She knows she can't trust her fellow scholars, who want to discredit her and claim Ajax for their own, but Henry insists he believes in the brilliant Mary, and only wants to help her obtain the respect she deserves. 
 
Now Mary has a new mystery to solve that's buried deeper than any dinosaur skeleton: She must uncover the secrets behind the Society and the truth about Henry. As her conscience begins to chafe against her ambition, Mary must decide what lengths she’s willing to go to finally belong – and what her heart really wants.

The Geomagician

Harriet Rix

The Genius of Trees tells the mind-expanding global story of the inventive and astonishing ways trees learned to shape our natural world. 
 
Over hundreds of millions of years, from prehistoric forests to the trees around us today, we see trees using fire as a reproductive tool, harnessing large mammals to spread their seeds (but poisoning smaller, less useful mammals), and splitting rock to create fertile ground in barren landscapes. 
 
Because trees, we discover, manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends. From the laurel cloud-forests of the Canary Islands to the magnificent sex-shifting oaks of Iraq, from the giant sequoias of California to the carbon-spinning junipers of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border – trees sculpt their environments. 
 
At once transporting and expert, The Genius of Trees gives us hope for the future. It enables us to see trees, for the first time, not as victims but as agents of change in a grand ecological narrative – and as leading actors in the great drama of life on earth.

The Genius of Trees

How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world

Robert Macfarlane

At its heart is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings – who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Is a River Alive? takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept. 
 
The book flows first to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened by goldmining. 
 
Then, to the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, where a desperate battle to save the lives of these waterbodies is under way. 
 
And finally, to north-eastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river – the Mutehekau or Magpie – is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign. 
 
At once Macfarlane’s most personal and most political book to date, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, spark debates and lead us to the revelation that our fate flows with that of rivers – and always has

Is a River Alive?

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

SHORTLISED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2025 
 
The powerful memoir on mental health, the healing power of nature, and how we need to heal it in return – with a blueprint for restoring Britain’s rainforests, perfect for readers of The Salt Path and The Lost Rainforests of Britain. 
 
Scholarly, wise, funny, charming, terrifying and thrilling... I adored it all, every page. - JOANNA LUMLEY 
 
Both a comfort and an inspiration - CHLOE DALTON, bestselling author of Raising Hare 
 
This is a lovely book - wise, brave, thoughtful, painfully intimate - but with a remarkable spiritual and environmental vision. - RORY STEWART 
 
 
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I look up through the canopy and time freezes as the oak leaves drift gently backwards and forwards, dappling the light as it falls onto my body. 
 
I am home. 
 
Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie decide to leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin’s childhood home, a Cornish hill farm called Cabilla in the heart of Bodmin Moor. 
 
There, they are met by unexpected challenges: a farm slipping ever further into debt, the discovery that the overgrazed and damaged woods running throughout the valley are in fact one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic strickening by Covid of Merlin’s father, the explorer Robin. 
 
As they fall more in love with the rainforest that Merlin had adventured in as a child, so begins a fight to save not only themselves and their farm, but also one of the world’s most endangered habitats. 
 
Our Oaken Bones is an honest and intimate true story about renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature, and our duty to heal it in return. 
 
 
 
Praise for Our Oaken Bones 
 
An enormously moving and inspiring story about war, trauma, nature and rebirth, written with infectious passion and unsparing honesty. I loved it. - DOMINIC SANDBROOK 
 
An extraordinarily courageous, urgent and powerful book. - ISABELLA TREE 
 
Deeply compelling... emotional, informative, pleasurable. I believe that this is an important work with planet-sized dreams and ambitions. Perhaps the greatest philosophy or teachable lesson that came to me off the page is that dominion comes with responsibility. - RUSSELL CROWE 
 
I love this book. - RICK STEIN 
 
Powerfully enchanting, written with verve and imbued with hope. - GUY SHRUBSOLE

Our Oaken Bones

Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests

Charles Foster

We tend to think that everything important comes from the centre: from big cities, from established orthodoxies in the sciences and the arts, from the Establishment in all its forms. We think this because the centre tells us it is so, but it's a lie. It is only at the edges that we think, innovate and thrive. 
 
This book travels to the far frontiers of the planet, and of human culture and consciousness; to the edges of continents, of evolution, of artistic and political movements, and of life itself: from a rocky precipice in the Peloponnese where the first human set foot in Europe to an ancient Egyptian temple where monotheism was invented; from St Francis, kissing lepers’ sores to the giant bird-eating mice of St Kilda. 
 
Why do we stare at sunsets? Why do we celebrate birthdays and grieve for those who are gone? Why do all adventures begin when we leave and get lost? Who has the better view of reality – the Government or the dispossessed? And what happens when we live with the knowledge that we’re all teetering on the edge of the dark?

The Edges of the World

At the margins of life, lands and history

Tharik Hussain

This revelatory history explores the ancient roots of Muslim Europe, tracing their journey through the Mediterranean. 
 
Our odyssey begins in the little-known Sufi lodges in Cyprus, where Muslims arrived in 647AD. From there, we travel through the continent – visiting places such as Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain – encountering red-haired European Sultans and Arabic-speaking Christian Kings. We meet forgotten Muslim pioneers, such as Abbas Ibn Firnas who gave us flight and Ibn Sina who gave us modern medicine. We see the Islam-inspired mudejar art of fourteenth-century Christians in Spain, and how such cross fertilisation birthed Europe’s ‘Renaissance’. We discover the long-forgotten tombs of European Muslims who knew the Prophet Muhammad, and the author – award-winning writer Tharik Hussain – becomes the first Muslim in over 900 years to pray inside the remains of a nameless Sicilian Mosque. 
 
To remedy Europe’s Islamic amnesia, this ambitious history reveals that Islam is no side show to Western culture – but rather has been integral to its development over 1,400 years.

Muslim Europe

A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History

Elizabeth Kolbert

Urgent and inspiring lessons from the frontlines of the climate catastrophe – by one of our most important and influential environmental writers. 
 
From Greenland’s melting ice sheets to New Zealand’s protected mountaintops, we join Kolbert on the road as she travels to the places most dramatically affected by climate change – revealing a world which is both dangerously fragile and remarkably resilient. 
 
We encounter newly discovered species and meet the last surviving members of others, witness the power of rewilding up close and are reminded of the abounding wonders of our natural world. Along the way we also meet countless brilliant individuals who are steering us towards a better future: scientists harnessing AI to commune with whales; activists successfully lobbying for the rights of nature; and ordinary people making extraordinary moves, such as the Samsø islanders leading completely carbon-neutral lives. 
 
The natural world is changing profoundly, and the threats to our planet are only growing more serious. Now is the time to deepen our understanding of this incredible world we are in danger of losing – and to act, while we still can.

Life on a Little-Known Planet

Dispatches from a Changing World

Bill Bryson

In this fully revised and updated edition of the best-selling popular science book of the 21st century, Bill Bryson makes complex subjects clear and compelling for everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
NOW FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED. 
 
'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 
 
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 
 
Bill Bryson can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to reflect the many scientific discoveries in the last twenty years since this book was first published, it explains among much else: 
<ul><li>why Pluto is no longer a planet</li><li>how the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years</li><li>how scientists used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans</li><li>why we still don't know what most of the universe is made of</li><li>how the little Higgs boson transformed physics</li></ul>This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers, young and old, as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now. 
 
Written in his inimitable style, Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 reveals the world in a whole new way. 
 
Praise for A Short History of Nearly Everything: 
 
‘I doubt that a better book for the layman about the findings of modern science has been written.’ Sunday Telegraph 
 
‘Bill Bryson has an unmatched gift for explaining the most difficult subjects in the clearest possible way.’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times 
 
‘Hugely readable and never obfuscating.’ Sunday Times 
 
‘A genuinely useful and readable book... A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again’ Daily Express 
 
‘The very book I have been looking for most of my life... Bryson wears his knowledge with aplomb and a lot of very good jokes.’ Daily Mail 
 
‘Destined to become a modern classic of science writing’ The New York Times

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0

Jerry Brotton

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. 
 
In Four Points of the Compass, Jerry Brotton takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. He reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand.

Four Points of the Compass

The Unexpected History of Direction

John Lewis-Stempel

England’s landscape is iconic – a tapestry of distinctive habitats that together make up a country unique for its rich diversity of flora and fauna. Concentrating on twelve habitats, John Lewis-Stempel leads us from estuary to park, chalk downland to woodland , river to field, village to moor, lake to heath, fen to coastal cliffs, in a book that is unquestionably his magnum opus. 
 
Referencing beloved great writers in whose footsteps he treads – Gilbert White, John Clare, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas – and combining breathtakingly beautiful prose with detailed wildlife observation, botanical fact and ancient folklore, Lewis-Stempel immerses himself in each place, discovering their singular atmosphere, the play of the seasons; the feel of the wind in midwinter; the sounds of daybreak; how twilight settles. Each one – whether managed park or wild moor, plunging cliff or man-made Broads – has also shaped human life, forming our idea of ourselves and our sense of what ‘England’ means. 
 
England: A Natural History is the definitive volume on the English landscape, and the capstone of John Lewis-Stempel’s nature writing. 
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‘No-one comes close to Lewis-Stempel’s ability to paint the English landscape in words. Maddeningly brilliant.’ - Sally Coulthard, author of A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects

England

A Natural History

James Rebanks

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. 
 
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. 
 
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. 
 
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change.

The Place of Tides

Kapka Kassabova

‘A classic for our times’ MONIQUE ROFFEY 
 
‘Haunting, beautiful… Anima will live with me for a long time’ CAL FLYN 
 
'A book that mesmerises with its sense of adventure and epic sweep, this is creative non-fiction at its best' GUARDIAN 
 
Over the course of one summer, Kapka Kassabova lives with perhaps the last true pastoralists in Europe. 
 
She joins the epic seasonal movement of vast herds of sheep, along with shepherds and dogs, to find pasture in the mountains. As she becomes attuned to the sacrifices inherent in this isolated existence, Kassabova finds herself drawn deeper into the tangled relationships at the heart of this small community. 
 
Anima is a spellbinding portrayal of the human–animal interdependence in pastoral life, and a plea for a different way of living – one where we might all begin to heal our broken relationship with the natural world. 
 
‘An extraordinary work of exploration, both inner and outer. It should be required reading for everyone thinking about our human environment: which is to say, all of us’ THE TABLET

Anima

A Wild Pastoral

Tim Coulson

How did everything start? 
 
And how did we come to exist? 
 
In one book Oxford Professor Tim Coulson seeks to simply explain what science tells us about the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the existence of humanity, and whether our existence was always inevitable or if we are just incredibly lucky. 
 
Coulson's engaging and accessible storytelling will enthral even the most reluctant of readers with its exploration of what thousands of years of study has told us about who we are, where we came from and what happens next.

A Little History of Everything

From the Big Bang to You

Carley Fortune

Good things always happen at the lake. After all, it's where Alice took that photo, the image that changed her life. Alice loves her career as a photographer, but sometimes she just needs to be in that magical place, back by the lake at Barry’s Bay. Charlie was only nineteen when Alice unknowingly took his picture. Now, Alice is faced with the man who helped make her career. Summer with Charlie is a balm for Alice’s soul. But one night, when she looks up and sees his piercing blue gaze on her, things start to feel different. 
 
But will the truth of their past drive a wedge between them, or bring them closer together?

One Golden Summer

Jack Cornish

Hundreds of thousands of miles of paths reach into, and connect, communities across England and Wales. More than just a practical way for us to walk, ride and cycle around, they are an inheritance from the past, revealing how our ancestors interacted with and shaped their landscapes. But thousands of miles are still missing from our maps. 
 
Exploring the deep history of these pathways, Jack Cornish uncovers how this millennia-old network was created and has evolved - from prehistoric trackways to the modern creation of towns - reflecting the contours of the past and the changing fortunes of society.

The Lost Paths

A History of How We Walk From Here To There

Cédric Sapin-Defour

Having a dog as company makes nothing feel excessive – not time or space. It's not even about passing time, but being of it. 
 
A tiny ad in a local newspaper catches Cédric Sapin-Defour’s eye: a litter of Bernese Mountain Dog puppies need homes. A lonely, single, sports teacher and mountain climber in the French Alps, Cédric visits the dogs and immediately falls for the puppy with a blue collar. 
 
Named Ubac, French for the north side of the mountain – the rainy, cloudy slope – the puppy quickly upends Cédric’s life. They go on hikes together, taking to the hills and exploring, forging a bond that brings joy and a sense of fulfillment and adventure. They brave the world together, hate to be apart, crave the mountains and the natural world; they protect each other. 
 
Over the course of thirteen years, their pack expands to include Mathilde, Cédric’s wife, and more dogs. Ubac and Me is an intimate meditation on a joyous life lived too fast, the aching pain of separation, and the transformative effect of unconditional love. A dog named for the rainy side of the mountain is an inspiring lesson in how walking the rocky, cloudy hills together can bring the greatest light, the sunniest joys, even if the shared journey is unbearably short. 
 
 
‘Not just a tribute to the love humans feel for their pets but also a means of voicing the deep grief that can be felt after a dog’s death, when all that is left is a collar and hairs, and the house seems too big without them.’ Guardian 
 
Ubac and Me has been a surprise bestseller and word-of-mouth sensation in France, championed by indie booksellers, selling 400,000 copies. 
 
Translated by Adriana Hunter.

Ubac and Me

A Life of Love and Adventure With a French Mountain Dog

Helen Molesworth

'A gem of a book' - Tracy Borman 
 
When Helen Molesworth joined the gem and jewellery industry she began her own love affair with one of humanity's oldest and richest fascinations. For as long as people have known about gemstones they have treasured them. Born of violent geological events and the chance meetings of minerals, their stories are an extraordinary journey through time, and are significant to the human narrative in as many ways as they boast sparkling facets. 
 
Selecting ten of nature's most dazzling jewels, Helen Molesworth makes journeys across the world to trace stones from their discovery to the moment a glimmering cut and polished masterpiece is traded, and then fought over, adorns emperors and kings, falls out of favour, and then raises eye-watering sums in another age. Touching on history and politics, archaeology and engineering, geography and geology, chemistry and physics, psychology and romance, fine art and high finance, her book is rich with great stories and has something for everyone.

Precious

The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time

Ruth Allen

Rocks and mountains have withstood aeons of life on our planet - gradually eroding, shifting, solidifying, and weathering. We might spend a little less time on earth, but humans are also weathering: evolving and changing as we're transformed by the shifting climates of our lives and experiences. So, what might these ancient natural forms have to teach us about resilience and change? 
 
In a stunning exploration of our own connection to these enduring forms, outdoor psychotherapist and geologist Ruth Allen takes us on a journey through deep time and ancient landscapes, showing how geology - which has formed the bedrock of her own adult life and approach to therapy - can offer us a new way of thinking about our own grief, change and boundaries. 
 
In a world shaken by physical, political, and medical disasters, Weathering argues for a deeper understanding of the ground beneath our feet to better serve ourselves and the world we live in.

Weathering

Earth wisdom for hopeful living

How the earth's deep wisdom can help us endure life's storms

Chris Thorogood

As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms. 
 
Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them. We join him on a mind-bending adventure, as he faces a seemingly impenetrable barrier of weird, wonderful and sometimes fearsome flora; finds himself smacking off leeches, hanging off vines, wading through rivers; and following indigenous tribes into remote, untrodden rainforests in search of Rafflesia's ghostly, foul-smelling blooms, more than a metre across. 
 
We depend on plants for our very existence, but two in five of the world's species are threatened with extinction - nobody knows how many species of Rafflesia might already have disappeared through deforestation. Pathless Forest is part thrilling adventure story and part an inspirational call to action to safeguard a fast-disappearing wilderness. To view plants in a different way, as vital for our own future as for that of the planet we share. And to see if Rafflesia itself can be saved.

Pathless Forest

The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers

Michael Taylor

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world. 
 
‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject' PETER FRANKOPAN 
'As thrilling as it is sweeping' TOM HOLLAND 
'This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA 
 
In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline - and so sparked a crisis that would engulf science and religion for the next six decades. By its end, the literal reading of the Bible had been overturned, science had been liberated from religion and the secular age had begun. Impossible Monsters takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women whose discovery of the dinosaurs revolutionised our understanding of the world, as well as those who resisted them and those, like Charles Darwin, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. It is the riveting story of a group of people who dared to think impossible things and then showed them to be true. 
 
‘Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES 
‘A stunning work ... of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE

Impossible Monsters

How the Discovery of Dinosaurs Changed the World

Patrick Joyce

** Longlisted for the 2024 Cundill History Prize** 
 
‘A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book’ Annie Proulx 
 
A way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban. 
 
In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people. In contrast to the usual insulting stereotypes, we discover a rich and complex culture: traditions, songs, celebrations and revolts, across Europe from the plains of Poland to the farmsteads and villages of Italy and Ireland, through the nineteenth century to the present day. Into this passionate history, written with exquisite care, Joyce weaves remarkable individual stories, including those of his own Irish family, and looks at how peasant life has been remembered - and misremembered - in contemporary culture. 
 
This is a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented in human history. Yet for Joyce, we are all the children of peasants, who must respect the experience of our ancestors. This is particularly pressing when our knowledge of the land is being lost to climate crisis and the rise of industrial agriculture. Enlightening, timely and vital, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on our history and our future remains profoundly relevant.

Remembering Peasants

A Personal History of a Vanished World

Neil Oliver

For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold. 
 
Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites - castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields - to unpick their stories.. 
 
Oliver invokes his family's history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place - and considers why they matter.

Hauntings

A Book of Ghosts and Where to Find Them Across 25 Eerie British Locations

Ed Conway

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 
*An Economist, Financial Times, Times and New Statesman Book of the Year* 
Shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award and the British Academy Book Prize, Longlisted for the Wainwright Conservation Writing Prize 
 
'Compelling' TIM MARSHALL 
'Lively, rich and exciting' PETER FRANKOPAN 
'Vitally important' TIM HARFORD 
 
_____________ 
 
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future. 
 
They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take these six crucial materials completely for granted. 
 
In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe to uncover a secret world we rarely see. As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future.

Material World

A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

Ranulph Fiennes

Co-opted by the British military, archaeologist and adventurer Thomas Edward Lawrence became involved in the 1916 Arab Revolt, fighting alongside guerilla forces, and made a legendary 300-mile journey through blistering heat. He wore Arab dress, and strongly identified with the people in his adopted lands. 
 
 By 1918, he had a £20,000 price on his head. 
 
 Despite people's fascination, Lawrence has long remained unknowable, one of history's most enigmatic explorers. But with in-depth knowledge of what it takes to venture into the unknown, this authoritative biography from explorer Ranulph Fiennes at last brings enthralling insight and clarity to this remarkable life.

Lawrence of Arabia

The definitive 21st-century biography of a 20th-century soldier, adventurer and leader

Alice Albinia

The Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are woven into its collective cultural psyche. From Neolithic Orkney to modern-day Thanet, Alice Albinia explores the furthest reaches of Britain's island topography, once known (wrote Pliny) by the collective term, Britanniae. Sailing over borders, between languages and genres, trespassing through the past to understand the present, this book knocks the centre out to foreground neglected epics and subversive voices. 
 
The ancient mythology of islands ruled by women winds through the literature of the British Isles - from Roman colonial-era reports, to early Irish poetry, Renaissance drama to Restoration utopias - transcending and subverting the most male-fixated of ages. The Britannias looks far back into the past for direction and solace, while searching for new meaning about women's status in the body politic. Boldly upturning established truths about Britain, it pays homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories.

The Britannias

And the Islands of Women

An Island Quest

Christopher Somerville

Travelling a thousand miles and across three billion years, Christopher Somerville, author of The January Man and Ships of Heaven, sets out to discover how the land beneath our feet shapes our past, our present and our future. 
 
Taking a journey of a thousand miles, Christopher Somerville begins in the far north, at the three-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, formed when the world was still molten, and travels south-eastwards to the furthest corner of Essex, where new land is being formed. Crossing bogs, scaling peaks and skirting quarry pits, he unearths the stories bound up in the layers of rock beneath our feet, and examines how they have influenced everything from how we farm to how we build our houses, from the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis. 
 
Told with characteristic humour and insight, this gripping exploration of the British landscape and its remarkable history cannot fail to change the way you see the world beyond your door. 
 
&lsquo;Somerville is a walker&rsquo;s writer&rsquo; Nicholas Crane

Walking the Bones of Britain

A 3 Billion Year Journey from the Outer Hebrides to the Thames Estuary

Steve Backshall

Take a deep breath 
 
Steve Backshall was nine years old the first time he saw a shark, while on holiday with his family in Malaysia. It was the beginning of a life-long fascination with these 'lords of the sea', and the oceanic life around them. His career as one of the world's most popular naturalists and explorers has taken him to countless underwater places, many never before seen by others. And he's also been witness to the startling decline in fortune of our oceans' wild inhabitants over the past fifty years. 
 
Deep Blue is a book a lifetime in the making: a remarkable blend of memoir, travel, and marine and environmental science that takes us on an unforgettable tour of the many worlds of aquatic life: from underwater deserts and rainforests to the evolution of ocean heroes like the sea turtle and the Great White, from the genesis of ocean life to the rapidly declining state of white polar seas and coral reefs. It's both a love letter to our precious oceans and rallying cry for what we must to do save them.

Deep Blue

My Ocean Journeys

Helen Czerski

WINNER OF THE 2024 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 
 
FINANCIAL TIMES 2023 HIGHLIGHT 
 
'Helen Czerski weaves together physics and biology, history and science, in a beautifully poetic way.' 
Professor Alice Roberts 
 
'In Helen Czerski's hands, the mechanical becomes magical. An instant classic.' 
Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read Water 
 
'Blue Machine is quite simply one of the best books I have ever read.' 
Dr George McGavin, zoologist, entomologist and broadcaster 
 
'A fascinating dive into the essential engine that drives our world. Czerski brings the oceans alive with compelling stories that masterfully navigate this most complex system.' 
Gaia Vince, science journalist, broadcaster and author of Nomad Century 
 
 
All of the Earth's ocean, from the equator to the poles, is a single engine powered by sunlight - a blue machine. 
 
Earth is home to a huge story that is rarely told - that of our ocean. Not the fish or the dolphins, but the massive ocean engine itself: what it does, why it works, and the many ways it has influenced animals, weather and human history & culture. 
 
In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean's complex, interlinked system. 
 
Timely, elegant and passionately argued, Blue Machine presents a fresh perspective on what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet. The understanding it offers is crucial to our future. Drawing on years of experience at the forefront of marine science, Helen Czerski captures the magnitude and subtlety of Earth's defining feature, showing us the thrilling extent to which we are at the mercy of this great engine.

Blue Machine

How the Ocean Shapes Our World

Roger Deakin

Waterlog celebrates the magic of water and the beauty of wild Britain. 
 
In 1996 Roger Deakin set out to swim the British Isles. He swam in the sea, in rivers, in streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools, fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries and even canals. This funny, wise, delightful book documents his journey. It inspired a movement, creating wild swimmers out of many readers. 
 
Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicide on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, Deakin discovered just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully-dressed fellow citizens. 
 
Waterlog is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water. 
 
INTRODUCED BY OLIVIA LAING 
 
'A delicious, cleansing, funny, wise and joyful book, so wonderfully full of energy and life’ Jane Gardam' 
 
'Roger Deakin is the perfect companion for an invigorating armchair swim' Daily Telegraph

Waterlog

A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain

Ben Wilson

Our modern-day cities might seem to represent our separation from the vitality of the natural world. Yet, as Ben Wilson reveals in this invigorating re-examination of urban landscapes across the globe, nature has always been at the heart of the city. 
 
Moving from Los Angeles and Delhi to Singapore and Amsterdam, Wilson explores how the bond between humans and nature has oscillated throughout history, and shows that – in a time of climate crisis – a new approach to rewilding may prove to be the city’s saviour.

Urban Jungle

The History and Future of Nature in the City

Wilding the City, from the author of Metropolis

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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